IT’S a reliable rule of politics that when a leadership election is on the horizon, potential candidates will start to subtly – or not so subtly – define themselves against the status quo.

The master of that technique, Gordon Brown, was in action in Llandudno last night, and his speech laden with references to “Labour values” and “moral imperatives” reminded me of some of the tub-thumpers he used to deliver as Chancellor, but has struggled to match since he became PM.

In the Blair era, particularly towards the end of it, all the political buzz was around Mr Brown and how different he was prepared to be from his old rival. So it is, on a smaller scale, with the Welsh party; with Rhodri Morgan – who addresses the conference tomorrow – preparing to retire next year.

No sooner had the dust settled on last May’s Assembly elections than people were busily saying that some of his policies were out of date, and that Labour had simultaneously lost touch with aspirant lower-middle class voters in urban areas and with Welsh-speakers in the North and West.

The coalition with Plaid Cymru, the result of that poor election showing, has also provided plenty of opportunities for Labour politicians to flash a bit of leg to unhappy party activists and hint they’d dismantle the thing tomorrow if they could.

It’s likely that the leadership election, when it comes – Mr Morgan will be keen to remind people that he’s leaving in September 2009, not next week – will become a contest over the future of that coalition.

Carwyn Jones is sure to stand, and will, I expect, be the man most likely to follow the pragmatic, one-Wales (pun intended) approach favoured by Mr Morgan. Who better to win back voters in Welsh-speaking areas than an affable Welsh speaker? I can’t see First Minister Jones ripping up the coalition deal.

I’m not sure Andrew Davies, his likely rival, would do so either, although many of his backers are MPs none too keen on working with Plaid.

If a Welsh leadership election is going to have a Jones and a Davies it might as well have a Lewis too, and if Huw Lewis, the AM for Merthyr, gets the necessary six nominations from the Assembly Labour group he’ll change the dynamic completely. Those who want to pull out of the Plaid deal would have a voice, and Carwyn Jones versus Huw Lewis would be a fascinating, raw political battle about what Labour should be in 21st Century Wales.

Others are studying the scene too – Leighton Andrews would offer another option – but the party will soon find itself at a crossroads. Labour could, by late 2009, be out of power in Westminster. In Wales, the questions over its future direction will become very pressing indeed.